


Could

by dreamoverdrive



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 00:04:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3915673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamoverdrive/pseuds/dreamoverdrive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zuko and Katara discuss their feelings for each other and what they mean before the final day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Could

“I think I could love you.”

Zuko looked up from the fire. At first he was certain that he had misheard what she said. It had been a long, silent night. They’d been listening to the crackling of the fire for the last few hours and in his half-dreaming and half-conscious state, it would have been easy to mistake her words for something he’d rather hear amid the low rumbling and snaps of the burning wood.

But when he looked up at her and studied her tense posture—the slow rise and fall of her breathing, her fisted hands in her lap—he knew he hadn’t been wrong. Her eyes rose to meet his and she tried a strange smile, something sad, frustrated, and tired all at once and she repeated—

“I really think that I could love you.”

He sat up straighter and tried to ignore the pounding in his chest, the roaring in his ears. He couldn’t mess this up. He couldn’t mess this up. He couldn’t—

“I think,” he said carefully, “that I could love you, too.”

He didn’t add that he _had_ loved her, had loved her for a very long time already. It was a strange kind of love. It wasn’t traditional where one told the other how they felt and they decided to become something _more_. It was the love bred by distance, by the sting of her water bending when they had fought, by the fury in her face when she insisted she could and would protect everyone from _him_ , by the sheer amount of tenderness in her eyes when she had stroked his jaw and traced his scar, by the broken and ferocious look on her face when she looked murder in the eyes and chose mercy, and by the way she sat by the fire with him breathing, listening, existing. No, it was not traditional and he had no idea how to go about telling her.

“Not so long ago just looking at you made me furious.” She laughed a little bit at her statement and she seemed to relax a bit, reclining into the wooden log at her back. “And now,” she glanced up at him and quickly looked back down at the fire. “Now I don’t know what to think when I look at you.”

His throat went dry. “Well, I haven’t known what to think about you since the first time I met you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he said in quick response to the interest in her voice. “I mean you were with the avatar and I was hunting the avatar and everything was a mess so I wouldn’t allow myself to consider—“

“Consider what?”

He stumbled over his words, still not quite believing this was happening at all. “Consider that I might feel something for you.”

“Even back then?” Her eyes grew bright and she leaned forward towards the fire. The yellow flames lit up her face with warm light and illuminated the blue in her eyes. She was all warm tones on her cheeks, her chin, her lips, but her eyes were glowing and shining with deep facets of blue.

“Yeah,” he managed. “I think even my uncle noticed.”

She laughed. “Is that why you started acting so horrible? I couldn’t tolerate you, Zuko. I think…” She trailed off and the laughter faded from her eyes. “I think I might have hated you.”

Something in his chest ached and he let out a long, quiet breath. Not that he wasn’t surprised. Not that he hadn’t seen it in her eyes when they had fought. He was well aware of it, but that didn’t change how he felt hearing about it now.

“And then it changed in that cave. It was so weird, Zuko, it all shifted. Suddenly I didn’t feel the same way and you were right there in front of me. I didn’t know what to think, but then you betrayed me and I was _so_ mad.”

He flinched and she shook her head in what almost seemed like wonder as she continued. “I was so mad, Zuko. I can’t remember being that mad for ages. I was never going to forgive you, never going to forgive myself—“

“I’m so sorry.” He could almost taste smoke on his lips and his body felt like it did before he redirected electricity, like it was crammed full of too much energy, like there was nowhere for it to go, like he was going to melt under the strain of it all—

“I know.”

She said the words so simply that the mess of apologies rising up in his throat shuddered to a halt.

‘I know you’re sorry. I understand why you were doing it all now. I mean, that doesn’t make any of it right in the slightest sense but I understand now and I’m still kind of mad about it but all I’m really feeling right now is...”

“Love?” he ventured.

Her lips curled up into a half smile. “It might be love. I told that I _could_ love you.”

He clasped his hands tightly and forced himself to meet her eyes. “I think you should know that I can love you and I think that I have loved you for a very long time.”

Her face softened and he thought that his rib cage would shake apart from all the pounding. “I just don’t think I could handle losing you,” she whispered.

He nodded, throat tightening. “I couldn’t lose you, Katara,” he croaked. “I couldn’t.”

She smiled weakly. “So what are we going to do about this then?”

There was a long pause before he finally said, “I think we should take care of each other. I think that’s all we can do right now.”

She pressed her lips together and nodded. “Yeah, I think you’re right. Just… Just stay near me, Zuko. I don’t know what’s going to happen on that day but stay near me.”

“Of course, Katara

**Author's Note:**

> I might write a sequel for this after the battle?


End file.
